After three months, six court hearings and nearly $30,000 in attorney and nursing home fees, 77-year-old Margie Hill has finally escaped the grip of Harris County and returned to live with her devoted son Marvin Evans.
“I cried so much in that nursing home; I hated it,” Hill says. “I love being home; Marvin takes the best care of me; it's so nice to have all my things around me.”
Late last year, Harris County officials mistakenly deemed Hill abandoned at a local hospital and forcibly made her a ward of the county, then opposed family and friends who came forward to care for her [“Whose Best Interests?” by Todd Spivak, January 25, 2007].
Luckily for Hill, she had the backing of Houston's prominent Liddell family, which formerly employed her as its housekeeper. Patriarch Frank Liddell is a partner at corporate law firm Locke Liddell & Sapp LLP.
If not for her well-connected benefactors, Hill almost certainly would have spent the rest of her life in Lexington Place Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, a dreary and unsafe facility along Houston's North Loop.
County officials sent Hill to Lexington Place and fought hard to keep her there. Doctors later found the care she received at Lexington Place was actually harming her. A diabetic, Hill left the facility with dangerously high blood-sugar levels.
“Her medications were not being managed well,” says Dr. Jeffrey Lee, medical director at The Hampton at Post Oak, a private nursing facility in the Galleria area that housed Hill for a few weeks before she went home. “She was overmedicated for her heart and undermedicated for her diabetes.”
This comes as no surprise since Lexington Place received dozens of citations in the last year for flaunting federal and state standards, including for “not properly caring for residents needing special services,” according to the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services, which oversees the state's private nursing homes.
Hill's case illustrates the vast divide between the way indigent guardianship programs are supposed to work and the way they do. And it raises the question of how often families lose custody of a loved one because they lack the money and know-how to grapple with the county.
“The county looks at these cases very blindly,” says Lise Liddell, who is now Hill's legal guardian. “The system designed to help people is not really helping them.”
At Probate Court One, in the Harris County Civil Justice building in downtown Houston, key decisions are often made behind a closed door. But sometimes the door is left cracked open.
On the morning of January 29, a reporter from the Houston Press spent 45 minutes listening in on a private meeting about Margie Hill held just outside the courtroom before a scheduled hearing. Attendees included Scott Hilsher, assistant attorney for Harris County; Josette LeDoux, Hill's court-appointed guardian ad litem; and Bridget O'Toole Purdie, an attorney for Bracewell & Giuliani LLP retained by the Liddells.
A couple days earlier, the Press had reported that Hill's predicament was caused by “bumbling bureaucrats” who recommended her for the Harris County Guardianship Program without first informing all of her children, as required by state law. County case worker Elizabeth Pena claimed she could not locate Hill's daughter in Louisiana, though Maxine Hill can be readily found simply by calling 4-1-1 directory assistance.
Hilsher and LeDoux discussed the Press story during their private meeting.
“I abhor red tape and I'm not going to manufacture red tape,” Hilsher said. “I am not one of those government people. I hate government bureaucrats and I refuse to be one.”
LeDoux remarked on a specific detail in the Press story, that Evans, an army veteran with physical disabilities, walked three miles a day to visit his mother at Lexington Place. “He could take a bus,” LeDoux said.
Hilsher made clear that Hill should not be allowed to go home: “She is not a candidate to be discharged from a nursing home.”
LeDoux expressed extreme reservations about Evans, though she has never met or spoken to him. “I will never support the fact that Mr. Evans will be responsible for her care,” she said. “I think he has her snowed. She is so softhearted he got her snowed. I question his sincerity.”
For 16 years, Hill and Evans have shared a cozy walk-up apartment just west of the Heights. Evans, who has worked as a mental health technician, single-handedly nursed his mother back to health after her stroke in 1999.
“The people at the county are a bunch of fools,” Evans says. “They go on assumptions that are all wrong.”
LeDoux, who received $125 an hour in taxpayer money to work on the Hill case, submitted an 11-page report to county probate court Judge Russell Austin at the January 29 hearing, explaining why Hill should remain a ward of the county.
In the report, LeDoux chastised the Liddells for giving Hill “false hope” by making assurances that she would one day return home. LeDoux also repeatedly impugned Lise Liddell's “sincerity” in her efforts to become Hill's guardian.
LeDoux was unimpressed that Lise Liddell had visited Hill at the nursing home nearly every day, attended all court hearings and padded Evans's bank account with several thousand dollars, just as her family had done for many years.
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annie mckenna 10/17/2008 2:47:23 PM
* Murray Feingold NY ELDER ABUSE OR SLAVERY Murray Feingold is old enough to retire. He has been a Postal worker for over forty years. He holds a full time position earning approximately $50,000 a year, in addition to working extensive overtime. Murray was happy for all those years until he was introduced to the judicial system in 2000. The landlord of the building he had been living in for the prior ten years refused to make what Murray considered necessary repairs, so Murray resorted to 'self help' and withheld a portion of the rent. The apartment that Murray was living in was rent controlled, so it is easy to understand why the landlord decided to start eviction proceedings. Instead of eviction, Murray was placed under guardianship by Hon. Anthony Cutrona Justice of the Supreme Court in Kings County, Brooklyn, NY in March of 2001 in order to protect him. This is when Murray says his life turned into a nightmare. When a guardian is appointed for a person, all their civil rights are lost. Murray could no longer control his own money. The court ordered that all of Murray's salary, including all overtime pay must be sent to the guardian, a company ironically called Self Help Community Services, Inc. Each week, the guardian returns $325 which he and his wife are expected to live on. A recent copy of payments made by the guardian on behalf of Murray were impossible to decipher. Many of Murray's over due bills to places like cable and cell phone companies, as well as one credit card bill, were in arrears. Some were accumulating interest almost equaling the minimum amounts being paid by the guardian. There was no indication of the amount of fees taken out by the guardianship company as compensation for their services. For the forty years prior to having a guardian, Murray claims, he had no problems paying all his bills, including car payments. What I found most troubling when I met Murray was that his most essential needs were not being met. He was in dire need of dental work. He was missing a few of his bottom teeth. He spoke fast and loud and kept asking me to repeat myself. I questioned him about these matters and I was shocked at his answer. He told me that he had been having dental work done but when the bill became five hundred dollars, the guardian would no longer pay it. He was more concerned with his loss of hearing which is having a negative effect at his job. He says that his supervisor and co-workers find it annoying because they have to constantly repeat instructions because Murray can't hear them when they speak. Sometimes people mistake his loudness for aggressiveness. According to Murray, he had a hearing test done last week and he is totally deaf in his right ear and partially deaf in his left. He said that he had ordered three hearing aids from a company called hearing aid express using a personal check, but the guardian cancelled them. It is hard to believe that a guardian of a person would not immediately address the issues which are negatively effecting the health and well-being of someone under their watch but NASGA, the National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse reports that this is an ever growing problem because there is a lack of accountability in guardianship courts. Murray has made his problem known to many agencies in New York, has contacted and emailed many New York state agencies, the first lady, Oprah Winfrey, etc. and has been told that they can not help him. Murray says he has written to Judge Cutrona asking for a hearing in order to get rid of this guardianship so often that recently the Judge wrote back accusing Murray of harassing him. Question. Why doesn't Murray just retire and quit his job? Answer: The guardian will continue to get and control his pension. Being a victim of a guardianship is like being caught in quicksand. You don't realize what you have gotten yourself into, and it is near impossible to get out. Murray's case is not an isolated one. Every day in every state across the country, guardians and conservators are being appointed, sometimes unnecessarily and greedy, corrupt individuals are lining their pockets with assets that should go to the care of the elderly person. Please join us in stopping guardianship abuse. You can learn more about this corrupt enterprise and how you can protect yourself and your loved ones at http://www.stopguardianabuse.org Watch Murray and other victims on youtube.com Search word NASGA Or call Annie McKenna 631-549-5665 (NASGA) is a civil and human rights organization formed by victims of forced and/or abusive guardianships and conservatorships. Our purpose is to protect Wards and their families - both physically and financially through education, outreach, and advocacy. Our goal is to assure that the law is not being misused to advantage special interests. http://www.stopguardianabuse.org